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It may be the coldest day of the year (thus far), but Allison isn’t going to let a few grey clouds and some drizzling rain get in the way of her weekend routine.
She adds an extra hoodie over her running tank and pulls on some lightweight gloves before she slides out of her car at the edge of the Preserve. Aside from her vehicle, the parking lot is completely empty, and she’d be lying if she said she wasn’t looking forward to having the place to herself. Maybe she’ll be able to get through her route in half an hour instead of forty-five minutes, since there won’t be anyone to detour around or lag behind. She pulls her hood up over her ponytail and slips her headphones in before starting off at a jog, hopping around the puddles of mud surrounding the start of the trail.
She's been running for ten minutes and she's finally starting to warm up when something hits her; a feeling, crawling up her spine like phantom fingers tracing her skin. She stops and lowers her hood, pauses her music and carefully looks around, squinting through the increasingly heavy rain. She takes her time viewing her surroundings but even though it doesn’t look like there’s anyone nearby, she knows her instincts, knows what it means when her body reacts in such a way.
Someone is watching her.
She pulls the headphones from her ears, stashes them into her pocket and pulls a small dagger from the holster strapped around her ankle. The wind is starting to pick up, causing rain to lash against her face. It also carries a scent with it and Allison takes a deep inhale, tilting her face until she finds the direction it seems to be coming from. It's a scent she's very familiar with, but it's completely out of place in the Preserve, more suited to the hallways of the high school or the backseat of Allison's car.
It's perfume. Lydia's favorite perfume, to be exact, something both dark and light at the same time, traces of citrus tinged with sandalwood.
Allison leaves the trail and starts walking through the trees, trying to keep her footsteps as light as possible, following the scent. After only a few moments, the scent is joined by a sound. It’s quiet, difficult to hear under the wind and lashing rain, but when she stops, closes her eyes and focuses, she manages to properly make it out through a break in the wind.
It’s her own name, being repeated over and over, as if being passed back and forth by the trees themselves.
“Hello?” she calls out, tightening her grip on her dagger. “Is anyone there?”
“Allison.” This time, the voice is a little louder. She stops and quickly gazes around the area, looking for anything out of the ordinary. It turns up nothing but she forces herself to stand still and look again, harder this time, linger on each tree and mound of grass.
This time, she sees something.
There’s a pile of damp, dead leaves heaped at the bottom of a towering oak tree. It's possible that animals heaped them there, or the wind blew them into the pile, but every other tree in the surrounding area is almost entirely clear of leaves. The longer Allison stares at the pile, the worse that horrible feeling of being watched gets. She shivers and tightens her grip on the dagger as she slowly steps closer, all too aware that she might be walking into a trap.
But when she sees patches of pale, ghostly white skin peeking through the leaves, culminating in a clump of matted red hair leaning against the tree’s broad trunk, she completely throws caution to the wind.
“Lydia!” she screams, dropping to her knees and sweeping away just enough of the leaves to make a positive identification. Lydia's face is smudged with dirt and there's dark blood crusted around her nose. Angry red scratch marks cover her cheeks and neck and she’s shivering violently. The clack of her teeth against each other is nearly deafening. She's not wearing a stitch of clothing and Allison immediately tears off her hoodie and drapes it over Lydia’s chest, trying to keep the rest of her covered with the leaves.
“Allison,” she croaks through cracked lips, one hand breaking through the leaves and wrapping around Allison's calf, “I don’t know how I got here.”
“We’ll figure that out later,” Allison says, fumbling her phone out of her pocket and dialing 911. “Just try to stay awake, okay?” Lydia nods and Allison presses against her as she talks to the dispatcher, hoping that her body heat will be enough to keep Lydia conscious until the ambulance comes.
By the time she spots the paramedic's yellow jackets through the trees, Allison is soaked to the bone. Lydia is still shivering, but her teeth don't seem to be smashing into each other with the same amount of force. She hasn't spoken again but her eyes are still open and she occasionally squeezes Allison's leg, albeit weakly. The paramedics are carrying two thick orange blankets but Allison refuses the one that is handed to her.
"She needs both of them," she says, gripping Lydia's hand tightly and helping her to her feet. Lydia's body is covered in dirt and dead leaves; the parts of her that are filthy greatly outnumber the parts that are clean. She slumps against Allison's side for the few moments it takes the paramedics to ready their stretcher and Allison holds her up with all of her strength.
"Is there anyone else you need to call?" one of the paramedics asks as they wrap Lydia in both of the blankets and strap her to the stretcher.
"Her mom. I'll call her right now, she can meet us at the hospital."
Allison has no plans of following the ambulance in her car; she's staying with Lydia as long as she needs to, as long as it takes. She calls Natalie as they walk back to the Preserve's parking lot and tells her to meet them at the hospital as soon as she can.
By the time they get into the ambulance, Lydia's color has improved slightly, but she still looks lost, confused and scared, like a child. She reaches for Allison's hand and Allison cranes forward as far as she can, trying to stay out of the paramedics way while they check Lydia's vital signs and temperature.
"You're going to be okay," Allison says, pressing her lips to Lydia's icy knuckles. "I promise. You'll be okay."
"But I don't know how I got there," Lydia says, voice raspy and dry. "I don't remember anything." Allison doesn't know what to say; she'd talked to Lydia on the phone last night and she'd sounded fine. She'd been home, in bed, making snarky comments about some reality show that was playing.
Allison doesn't know why or how this happened. Even though the bite mark on Lydia's side healed weeks ago, she's not even sure if Lydia is human anymore.
So she just presses another kiss to Lydia's hand and repeats herself.
"You're going to be okay."